Vacaciones de Primavera: Día Uno. Trenes.

The start to my spring break included trains, trains, and...more trains. We left Valladolid on Thursday at 5:30 pm to Hendaye, France. While attempting to reserve tickets at the train station on Wednesday, we learned that in order to reserve tickets for the Eurail pass, you have to actually be in the country you're wanting to travel in. Meaning you can't be responsible and order all your tickets ahead of time to make sure nothing goes wrong. You just have to wait until you're in the country and hope the trains aren't full. And most trains need reservations with the Eurail pass. So it turned out that we had to switch our plans around a bit and go through Hendaye, France to Paris. The train ride to Hendaye was gorgeous. I wish I could have seen more of North Spain while here because it is so beautiful. When we arrived in Hendaye Thursday night, we literally had four minutes to catch the train to Paris. And of course we didn't have seat reservations yet. Luckily, they let us on the train and let us reserve our seats while on the train. So then we took the overnight Paris train, trying to ignore the crying baby while trying to sleep. Once in Paris, our original plan was to take a train from Paris to Bern, Switzerland - easy. Well obviously, we weren't able to reserve tickets when we croseed the country border in Hendaye because of needing to catch the train, so, of course, all the trains to Bern were full. As were the trains to pretty much everywhere else that made sense to go. After speaking with a train station worker for a while, he finally helped us figure out a way to get to Switzerland. The goal was just to get to Switzerland, because once in Switzerland, we would no longer need to reserve tickets. So around 11:00 am, we took a train from Paris to Troyes, France. In Troyes, we had about five hours to kill until the next train so we walked around the city, looking for internet so we could tell our hostel we wouldn't make it that night and try to find another one. We found a wifi hotspot after a while of searching, but the person working hardly knew any English and wouldn't let us order anything and told us to just leave. So much for that plan. Troyes is a smaller French city, so really, almost no one knew English outside of the train station. I never realized until then how difficult a language barrier can actually be. We walked around a bit longer and had some lunch - Aryn had a kabob and I had a French pastry. We sat around in a park for a while, watched a girl trying to learn stick shift and crashing into the curb every few seconds, found internet in a McDonalds, and eventually made it back to the train station. Before our train left, I decided to run to the bathroom quick. I walked into the bathroom and this lady started yelling something in French at me. I used my ever so useful phrase "Je ne parle français" (I don't speak French) but she would not stop yelling this at me. After a while I just left, planning to use the bathroom on the train. When we got on the train, I went to the bathroom and a minute later, some lady started banging on the door, screaming at me in French. It was probably the scariest bathroom experience I've ever had. So then once I sat back down, a kid two seats behind us started screaming - so much worse than the baby on the overnight train and so much worse than the French woman outside the bathroom door. He screamed the entire three hours, his parents actually laughing at him while he did so and encouraging him to keep going. Needless to say, Advil was an absolute must when the train ride was over. We arrived in Mulhouse, France around 8 pm and soon left for the next train to Basel, Switzerland. I was so glad to leave France and arrive in Switzerland. I was so tired from hardly getting any sleep, super crabby, incredibly annoyed with all the French people yelling at me, and so frustrated with the language barrier. So when we arrived in Switzerland, I was very happy. I already knew I would like Switzerland much better. While waiting for the train in Basel, I decided to grab a quick dinner at an "American Bakery" which I thought was incredibly funny. I'm not sure why anyone would want to run an American bakery when they could be running a French bakery or something. From Basel, we took the next train to Bern. Once arriving in Bern, we got on our last train of the night to Interlaken, Switzerland. We arrived around midnight and the streets were absolutely empty. This was so weird for us, as we're used to everyone usually being out until 4 am on Friday nights. Well we found our hostel (which just so happened to be the top ranked hostel in Switzerland), got our keys outside the building, and finally got to rest. In our room, we met a guy from Texas who was super nice and super helpful. He had just gotten released from the Air Force the day before and was just traveling and doing crazy things to celebrate. His plans for Europe included bungee jumping, hang gliding, sky diving, mountain biking, intense hiking, etc. Crazy, but very cool. We went to bed around 1 am and finally were able to get a decent night's sleep. Horrible first day, but it was so nice when it was finally over.